DETAILED ACTION
Notice of Pre-AIA or AIA Status
The present application, filed on or after March 16, 2013, is being examined under the first inventor to file provisions of the AIA .
Priority
Acknowledgment is made of applicant's claim for foreign priority based on an application filed in the Republic of Korea on 22 December 2022. It is noted, however, that applicant has not filed a certified copy of the KR10-2022-0181851 application as required by 37 CFR 1.55.
Information Disclosure Statement
The information disclosure statement (IDS) submitted on 05 December 2023 has been considered by the examiner.
Claim Objections
Claims 3 and 5-6 are objected to because of the following informalities:
Claim 3 recites “in the rage of”, which appears to be a typo and should be “in the range of”
Claims 5 and 6 each recite “Wherein” (i.e. using a capital W) but should be “wherein” (i.e. using a lower-case w).
Appropriate correction is required.
Claim Rejections - 35 USC § 112
The following is a quotation of 35 U.S.C. 112(b):
(b) CONCLUSION.—The specification shall conclude with one or more claims particularly pointing out and distinctly claiming the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claims 1-6 are rejected under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) as being indefinite for failing to particularly point out and distinctly claim the subject matter which the inventor or a joint inventor regards as the invention.
Claim 1 recites “(0.005≤x≤0.1)” in line 9 and recites “(Here, Me includes one or more selected among Ti, Cr, Zr, Hf, V, Nb, Ta, Mo, and Al)” in lines 10-11. The claim is considered indefinite because there is a question or doubt as to whether the features introduced by the parentheses are (a) merely exemplary of the remainder of the claim, and therefore not required, or (b) a required feature of the claims. In the interest of advancing prosecution, the disputed limitations will be considered to be required features of the claims.
Claim 3 recites the limitation "the sum" in line 2. There is insufficient antecedent basis for this limitation in the claim because a sum has not been previously introduced in the claim. Although the recited sub-coatings would necessarily have a thickness (i.e. the limitation “the thickness” as recited in lines 3 and 4 are not considered indefinite), a sum is a result of mathematical calculation and therefore is not an inherent feature and so should be introduced in the claim using the indefinite article “a”.
It is noted that claims 2-4 each introduce ranges as “the range”. This limitation is not considered indefinite because the range is immediately defined and therefore the meaning of the term in clear.
It is noted that claim 6 introduced “the lattice constant”. This limitation is not considered indefinite because a lattice constant is a material property that must be necessarily present in a crystalline material (i.e. the sub-coatings are considered to be at least semi-crystalline due to having a cubic structure as recited in claim 1).
Claims 2 and 4-6 are rejected as they depend on a rejected claim.
Allowable Subject Matter
Claims 1-6 would be allowable if rewritten or amended to overcome the rejection(s) under 35 U.S.C. 112(b) set forth in this Office action.
The following is a statement of reasons for the indication of allowable subject matter:
The following references are considered the closest prior art:
Masumoto et al. (JPH07180038, previously cited, machine translation of written description attached) discloses a high hardness film for preventing wear on machine parts and tools. The film has a general formula of Ala Mb where M is selected from a list of elements that can include Mn at a fraction of 1.5-40 at% and the film has a gradient of the amount of nitrogen (forming a nitride). However, the film does not include the recited alternating layer of MeN.
Kobata et al. (JP 2009-203489, previously cited, machine translation of written description attached) teaches a hard coating for a cutting tool that can include at least one of a list of elements that includes Al and Mn, etc. and may be a nitride. However, Kobata does not teach the coating to be an alternating stack of sublayers and does not specify any specific proportion of Mn.
Yanagisawa et al. (JP 2020-055041, machine translation attached) teaches hard coating layer for surface-coated cutting tool. The coating film has a composite nitride layer or composite carbonitride layer of Ti, Al, and Mn with a cubic structure. The coating may have a lower layer of a Ti compound and an upper layer containing at least an aluminum oxide layer. However, the layer containing Al and Mn has a non-zero amount of Ti, based on the sum of α+β (i.e. sum of Al and Mn when considering only Al, Mn, and Ti) being 0.505-0.950, and therefore does not meet the limitations of Formula 1.
Conclusion
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/KIM S. HORGER/Examiner, Art Unit 1784